Drew Galloway / Photo: Jeanne Clayton
that the more we learn about this
Frontiers
of Science
News from the IONS Research Department
A Research-Based Model of
Consciousness Transformation
Whether sudden or gradual, pro-
found or mundane, relatively
minor or earthshaking, change
happens. And just as change is
always happening in the natural
world in endless cycles of sea-
sons, birth, and death, it happens
continuously in our human expe-
rience. When those changes are
profound and life changing, af-
fecting our view of the world and
our place in it, we call them trans-
formations in consciousness.
For more than a decade, IONS
researchers have been investigat-
ing transformations in conscious-
ness. How do they happen? What
are the facilitators? What are the
barriers to transforming? We believe
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A transformation in conscious-
complex and mysterious process,
the more successful we’ll be in
helping to cultivate transforma-
tion in individuals, our communi-
ties, and our institutions. To this
end, IONS researchers engaged
in a series of studies that included
analysis of individual narratives
of personal transformations, focus
groups, in-depth interviews with
sixty representatives of ancient
and modern transformative tradi-
tions, surveys of more than two
thousand people, and longitudinal
studies of people engaged in spiri-
tual and transformative practices.
This research led us to develop a
working model of consciousness
transformation, depicted in the
diagram on page 33. (For more
on our findings, see the recently
published book and DVD Liv-
ing Deeply: The Art and Science of
Transformation in Everyday Life.)
Models are useful because they
provide a representational map
of a phenomenon of interest. Just
as geographical maps facilitate
in-depth exploration of specific
territories, this working model
provides one way of framing the
transformative process that we
hope will guide further study.
The IONS Change Model
Whether it happens to a soldier in
the midst of battle or a mother who
has lost a child or a businessman
seized by a moment of wonder in
nature, our research has identi-
fied a set of common factors in
the transformative process—clues
indicating that while the process
may be complex, it is not com-
pletely random and unpredictable.
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ness begins long before most
people are aware that anything is
changing. Genetics, environment,
peak experiences, numinous or
mystical moments, life transi-
tions—all these primers, even if
not directly experienced as trans-
formative, lay the groundwork
for what is to come. Even when
people can point to a pivotal mo-
ment in their transformative
journey, they can often identify, in
retrospect, what might be termed
“destabilizers”—a combination of
factors that set the stage.
The result is a specific episode,
period of life, or series of experi-
ences that culminate in an aha!
moment. Whether an encounter
of stunning beauty or one of deep
pain or loss, this “moment” chal-
lenges people’s previous assump-
tions, leading them to change the
way they see the world. Attempts
to fit the new experiences or real-
izations into their old perspective
fail, often forcing their awareness
to expand to make room for the
new insight.
This can lead to redoubled ef-
forts to protect against further de-
stabilization, but it can also lead to
an entirely new worldview that is
capable of giving meaning to what
happened. Some find religion,
others convert to a different reli-
gion, yet others reject religion al-
together. They may move toward
spiritual or philosophical inquiry,
find a teacher that is familiar
with this kind of experience, or
join a community of like-minded
people with whom it is safe to talk
about what happened. Some get
obsessed with continually chasing
F RON T IER S O F C ONSCIOUSN ESS
after new epiphanies, driven by a
desire to repeat the original expe-
rience, always looking and never
finding. However one responds, it
often leads to the discovery of a set
of practices that help to integrate
new insights as the transformative
path unfolds.
These practices can take many
forms but include four essen-
tial elements: attention toward
greater self-awareness; intention
toward healing outcomes; rep-
etition of new behaviors; and
guidance from trusted people who
are experienced in the practice.
At this point in the cycle, people
often immerse themselves in
the practices and over time face
the challenge of finding ways
to integrate these practices into
S u m m e r 2 0 0 9 | N o . 2 3
everyday life. During this period,
people are often tempted to iso-
late their practice from the rest
of their life, but in doing so, they
can inadvertently stall the trans-
formative process by not allowing
new patterns of thinking and be-
havior to suffuse each moment of
each day. As the cycle continues,
life itself eventually becomes the
primary practice—whether or not
a formal practice remains a part
of the process.
The next common challenge
is that even when practice be-
comes integrated into everyday
life, the process can remain a per-
sonal quest—all about me or about
achieving some outcome for per-
sonal benefit. In our goal-oriented
culture, this is completely natural,
| S HIF T: A T T H E F RON T IER S
but for growth and development
to continue, true transformation
appears to require that the pro-
cess move from I to we. In other
words, as my practice infuses my
life, I cannot help but wish for and
actively work toward the transfor-
mation of my community. Altru-
ism and compassion born of shared
destiny rather than duty or obliga-
tion often emerge here.
At the same time, people can
become so immersed in a sense of
oneness and shared responsibility
that they lose sight of the comple-
mentary movement from we to me.
The results of this can range from a
cult mentality to becoming so fa-
tigued by helping others that peo-
ple forget to care for themselves.
Equally important as serving the
community is discovering how
best to channel our own unique
combination of talents, resources,
experiences, and skills in a way
that serves our own well-being.
Once that sweet dance be-
tween self-actualization and self-
transcendence, formal and in-
formal practice, and receiving
and giving comes more naturally,
people report an experience of ex-
istence that we call “living deeply.”
From equanimity in the face of
life’s challenges to a daily sense
of wonder and awe, even the most
mundane aspects of life become
sacred in their own way.
And this way of living makes per-
sonal transformation contagious.
As people share their experiences
and their presence of being with
others, a collective transforma-
tion that is more than the sum of
its parts begins to emerge. Indi-
vidual transformations combine to
O F C ONSCIOUSN ESS | 3 3
FRON T IERS OF S C IEN C E

create collective transformation, This link is important, Johnstone Cross-Cultural Application

which in turn stimulates more in-
dividual transformations, and so on
in an ever-widening circle of deep
renewal.
Cassandra Vieten, PhD, is Director
of Research at IONS.
Research Roundup
Compiled by Marc Kaufman
and Cindy Kuzma
Transcendence Is Trainable
A recent study by a University of
Missouri neuropsychologist sug-
gests that people in many disci-
plines, including peace studies,
health care, and religion, can learn
different ways to attain selfless-
ness, to experience transcendence,
and to help themselves and others.
Brick Johnstone, professor of
health psychology at the University
of Missouri School of Health Profes-
sions, has data to support a neuro­
psychological model that proposes
that spiritual experiences associated
with selflessness are related to de-
creased activity in the right parietal
lobe of the brain. His study, pub-
lished in the peer-reviewed journal
Zygon, is one of the first to use indi-
viduals with traumatic brain injury
to determine this connection.
“The brain functions in a certain
way during spiritual experiences,”
said Johnstone. “We studied people
with brain injury and found that
those with injuries to the right pari-
etal lobe of the brain reported higher
levels of spiritual experiences, such
as transcendence.”
said, because it means selflessness
can be learned by decreasing ac-
tivity in that part of the brain. He
suggests this can be done through
conscious effort, such as medita-
tion or prayer. People with these
selfless spiritual experiences also
are more psychologically healthy,
especially if they have positive be-
liefs that there is a God or higher
power who loves them.
“Our research focused on the
personal experience of spiritual
transcendence and does not in any
way minimize the importance of
religion or personal beliefs, nor
does it suggest that spiritual expe-
riences are related only to neuro­
psychological activity in the brain,”
Johnstone said. “It is important to
note that individuals experience
their God or higher power in many
different ways, but that all people
from all religions and beliefs appear
to experience these connections in a
similar way.”
Along with other recent neu-
roradiological studies of Buddhist
meditators and Franciscan nuns,
Johnstone’s work suggests that all
individuals, regardless of cultural
background or religion, experience
the same neuropsychological func-
tions during spiritual experiences.
Transcendence, including feelings
of universal unity and a decreased
sense of self, is a core tenet of all
major religions. Meditation and
prayer are the primary vehicles by
which such spiritual transcendence
is achieved.
Source: University of
Missouri–Columbia
(December 2008)
of Integrated Medicine
When a number of Tibetan refugee
monks, fleeing violent religious
persecution, arrived at Boston
Medical Center suffering from
symptoms of traumatic stress that
interfered with their meditation
practice, members of the Boston
Center for Refugee Health and
Human Rights (BCRHHR) had to
bridge the gap between Eastern
and Western medicine, research-
ing and implementing their own
complementary therapy options
to heal the monks.
The monks were diagnosed by
their traditional healers as having
srog-rLung, a life-wind imbalance.
According to Tibetan medicine, a
srog-rLung disturbance has the
potential to develop into a seri-
ous mental illness, leaving the
victim at odds with the “balance
of the universe” and jeopardiz-
ing personal health. Symptoms
of srog-rLung include uncontrol-
lable crying, worrying, excessive
mental, physical, or verbal activ-
ity, and an unhappy mind. Other
conditions affecting the monks’
health included anxiety, depres-
sion, and post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD).
To provide complementary
ther­apy for the monks, research-
ers at BCRHHR had to integrate
Eastern and Western medicine
to properly address both condi-
tions, srog-rLung and PTSD. The
spiritual aspect of the Tibetan
medical model, which is at the
core of the monks’ experience
of illness, guided this research.
The ancient Tibetan Bon tradi-
tion of yogic practice was used

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to induce the mind into a relaxed
state necessary to purify oneself
through motion. This yogic prac-
tice combines movement of the
body and controlled breath with
movements of the mind to bring
mental stability. Because sound
has a direct connection to the
heart, singing bowl therapy—
a form of music therapy—was
used to help realign the monks’
inner states.
Michael Grodin, professor of
health law, bioethics, and hu-
man rights at Boston University
School of Public Health, said
Western medicine techniques,
such as prescribing antidepres-
sants and psychotherapy, were
integrated with Tibetan healing
practices, including medicines
prescribed by Tibetan medicine,
meditation advice, and tai chi and
qigong exercises.
“This research and treatment
involving patients accustomed
only to traditional medicine pre-
sented an opportunity for the
acceptance of nontraditional
thera­peutic approaches,” said
Grodin, who is trained in tra-
ditional Chinese medicine and
coauthored a paper on the experi­
ence that appeared online in the
March issue of Mental Health,
Religion and Culture. “The dif-
ference between Tibetan and
Western disease pathologies rep-
resents the need for evidence-
based complementary therapies,”
as with these Tibetan monks in
exile and for other religious refu-
gee populations.
Source: Boston University
School of Public Health
(March 2009)
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Spirituality Key to
Children’s Happiness
Children who feel that their lives
have meaning and value and who
develop deep, quality relationships—
each of which are measures of spiri-
tuality—are happier. But, somewhat
surprisingly, it would appear that
religious practices have little effect
on the children’s happiness.
These are the findings of a recent
study by Mark Holder, an associ-
ate professor of psychology at the
University of British Columbia,
Okanagan, and his colleagues Ben
Coleman and Judi Wallace. Their
research was published in the on-
line edition of Journal of Happiness
Studies in January 2009.
Both spirituality (an inner belief
system that a person relies on for
strength and comfort) and reli-
giousness (institutional religious
rituals, practices, and beliefs) have
been linked to increased happiness
in adults and adolescents. Very little
work has been done on younger chil-
dren, however. In an effort to iden-
tify strategies to increase children’s
happiness, Holder and his team set
out to better understand the nature
of the relationship between spiritu-
ality, religiousness, and happiness in
children aged 8 to 12 years. A total of
320 children, from four public schools
and two faith-based schools, com-
pleted six different questionnaires
to rate their happiness, spirituality,
religiousness, and temperament.
Parents were also asked to rate their
child’s happiness and temperament.
The scientists found that those
children who said they were more
spiritual were happier. In particu-
lar, the personal (i.e., meaning
and value in one’s own life) and
| S HIF T: A T T H E F RON T IER S
communal (i.e., the quality and
depth of interpersonal relation-
ships) aspects of spirituality were
strong predictors of children’s
happiness. Spirituality explained
up to 27 percent of the differ-
ences in happiness levels among
the children. Counterintuitively,
religious practices—including
attending church, praying, and
meditating—had little effect on a
child’s happiness.
According to the authors, “En-
hancing personal meaning may
be a key factor in the relation be-
tween spirituality and happiness.”
They suggest that strategies aimed
at increasing personal meaning for
children, such as expressing and
recording acts of kindness toward
others as well as acts of altruism
and volunteering, may help to
make children happier.
Source: Springer Science+
Business Media
(January 2009)
Teleportation Between
Atoms Achieved
Reaching a significant milestone in
the global quest for practical quan-
tum-information processing, sci-
entists have successfully teleported
information between two separate
atoms in unconnected enclosures a
meter apart.
Teleportation may be nature’s
most mysterious form of transport:
Quantum information, such as the
spin of a particle or the polarization
of a photon, is transferred from one
place to another without traveling
through any physical medium. It has
previously been achieved between
photons over very large distances,
between photons and ensembles
O F C ONSCIOUSN ESS | 3 5
FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE
of atoms, and between two nearby
atoms through the intermediary
action of a third. None of those,
however, provides a feasible means
of holding and managing quantum
information over long distances.
Now a team from the Joint Quan-
tum Institute (JQI) at the Univer-
sity of Maryland and the University
of Michigan has succeeded in tele-
porting a quantum state directly
from one atom to another over a
substantial distance. That capability
is necessary for workable quantum-
information systems because those
systems will require memory stor-
age at both the sending and receiv-
ing ends of the transmission. The
scientists report that by using their
protocol, atom-to-atom teleported
information can be recovered with
perfect accuracy about 90 percent of
the time, and that figure can be im-
proved. Their work was published in
the journal Science in January 2009.
Teleportation works because
of the remarkable quantum phe-
nomenon known as entanglement,
which only occurs on the atomic
and subatomic scales. Once two
objects are put in an entangled
state, their properties are inextri-
cably entwined. Although those
properties are inherently unknow-
able until a measurement is made,
measuring either one of the objects
instantly determines the charac-
teristics of the other, no matter
how far apart they are.
Source: University of Maryland
(January 2009)
Chimpanzee Forethought
The evidence is unambiguous: Over
the course of ten years, he calmly
and coolly collected stones and
3 6 | S u m m e r 2 0 0 9 | N o .
fashioned concrete discs that he always calm when collecting or
had every intention of later hurling manufacturing his ammunition.
at visitors. While that may sound Osvath thinks wild chimps in
unfriendly, it hardly rates as a sci- general, and other animals as well,
entific breakthrough—unless the likely have the planning ability
“he” is a male chimpanzee in a zoo, demonstrated by the captive chimp
and the evidence is among the first described in the study. “I think that
data to show that animals other wild chimpanzees might be even bet-
than humans can make spontane- ter at planning, as they probably rely
ous plans for future events. on it for their daily survival,” he said.
“These observations convincingly “The environment in a zoo is far less
show that our fellow apes do con- complex than in a forest. Zoo chimps
sider the future in a very complex never have to encounter the dangers
way,” said Mathias Osvath of Lund in the forest or live through periods
University. “It implies that they of scarce food. Planning would prove
have a highly developed conscious- its value in ‘real life’ much more than
ness, including lifelike mental sim- in a zoo.”
ulations of potential events. They Source: Cell Press
most probably have an ‘inner world’ (March 2009)
like we have when reviewing past
episodes of our lives or thinking of
days to come. When wild chimps
collect stones or go out to war, they
probably plan this in advance. I
would guess that they plan much of
their everyday behavior.”
Although researchers have ob-
served many ape behaviors that
could involve planning both in the
wild and in captivity, it gener-
ally hasn’t been possible to judge
whether they were really meeting
a current or future need, Osvath
said. For instance, when a chimp
breaks a twig for termite fishing Erratum
or collects a stone for nut cracking,
In the spring issue of
it can always be argued that he is
motivated by immediate rather Shift (#22), the full
than future circumstances. attribution for the cover
That’s what makes the newly art should have read:
described case so special. It is clear Gemini the Twins by
that the chimp’s planning behav- Stephanie Dalton Cowan,
ior is not based on a “current drive
courtesy of Photodisc
state,” Osvath said. In contrast
to the chimp’s extreme agitation Illustration/Getty Images.
when throwing the stones, he was
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